JAW ON THE FLOOR: Starbucks to Release Sonic Youth Celebrity Compilation (WTF)

"at least they didn't name a motor oil after me" - Jerry Garcia on Cherry Garcia ice cream

Nabisco I defer to your well-reasoned, what shall we call it? process of understanding Starbucks. It's a very good point that funkiness and "a place you want to hang out in" is not the point of Starbucks at all. McDonald's designs and buys its furniture specifically so that people will grow uncomfortable on it after a set period of time. Starbuck's doesn't go this far but the idea is the same. I think it's a shame. Coffee is great. It deserves to be given its own little moment, not absently sipped at from some great cardboard vat while answering email and scrabbling for a mobile phone in your Jansport backpack.

Amazed that there's any debate about SY's history of anti-corporate rhetoric and leftist politics. It's been present, at least suggestively, in their lyrics for decades. Thurston still drifts that way in Bull's Tongue.

-- Bob Standard, Thursday, December 6, 2007 2:01 PM (4 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

I'm aware of their anti-corporate rhetoric, I just tend to ignore it or not place too much stock in it since they've been employees of one of the biggest major labels for 20 years.

a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion
a Guardian style "lol open your eyes, sheeple" kind of opinion

there's still not a coffee shop in the town i grew up in, it's only around 4,000 people.

there is a starbucks in the next town, it's about 12,000 people, about 20 minutes away, i know people were excited when it opened.

and sonic youth were the ones that made it "okay" to SIGN to a major for the most part, i think that was part of cobain's thinking if i recall.

Tracer, now I'm going to have to find this memo that leaked from Starbucks, where someone very much at the top lamented that Starbucks sucked and proceeded to list every business decisions that had made the stores awful. (They used to be more comfy -- there was a transition moment from "pretending to be real coffeeshop" to basically being airport walkthrough places)

"The parts where Starbucks succeeded like mad, competition-wise, were (a) realizing they could create a market of people who wanted to grab coffee drinks on the go that would absolutely DWARF the market of people who wanted to spend time in pleasant coffeeshops, and (b) realizing that the world was becoming increasingly like an airport, in cities and small towns alike, and happily meshing into a food-court society would conquer attempts to offer people a break from it"

- nabisco

Exactly. That's what I meant when I said Starbucks makes me depressed cuz it feels like a mall. But said much better.

and sonic youth were the ones that made it "okay" to SIGN to a major for the most part, i think that was part of cobain's thinking if i recall.

Seminar N-233: Sonic Youth and the Gentrification of American Indie Rock (4 hrs, with coffee break, Q&A)

http://www.slate.com/id/2161504/entry/0/

Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and what some might call the commiditization of our brand.

and sonic youth were the ones that made it "okay" to SIGN to a major for the most part, i think that was part of cobain's thinking if i recall.

True, to an extent. Husker Du were the "first" to sign to a major, and supposedly Bob Mould gave SY lots of advice on how to navigate those waters. HD made it ok for SY to sign, SY made it ok (and profitable enough for DGC) for Nirvana to sign, and apres Nirvana, le deluge.

it may have led to the commoditization of the brand, but I bet it did a number on whipped-cream futures

The biggest forehead-slapper in that short memo is the one that goes "holy crap, Starbucks stores DON'T smell like coffee any more! it's a coffee shop that doesn't even smell like coffee!" -- odd to see someone lay out the specific processing decisions that made the stores start seeming less and less pleasant

starbucks should start marketing minimal so table is the table can really flip out

SY and Starbucks to put out a compilation of songs picked by celebrities ("from Jeff Tweedy to Beck to Marc Jacobs to Portia de Rossi to Michelle Williams") is totally fucking hilarious and its a shame that the debate is whether or not we should angry or offended by it.

For SY and Starbucks, rather

Reaching way back to beat some dead horses:

Bob, you sure are obsessed with stuff like "marketing" and "demographics" for someone up on such a high horse about a corporate coffee chain. Are you disappointed in Sonic Youth's association with Starbucks because of the cognitive dissonance with their public image as lefty indie deities, or do you actually see doing a one-off Starbucks-sponsored compilation as some huge ethical departure for a band that's been signed to a major label for nearly 2 decades?

Probing questions put to me by Alex.

Ummmm, I'm obsessed with marketing and demographics cuz I'm personally interested in how cultural meaning/value is created, used and transmitted. It's more or less my hobby.

And I don't think I'm "on a high horse" against Starbucks. In parsing how I think hipsters view the chain (my first posts on this thread), I was attempting to keep my own take out of the equation. Of course, I don't like Starbucks at all, so that had to factor in, but in my initial posts, I wasn't attacking them. Just talking semi-objectively about how a specific group seems to see them

Personally, the SY record deal doesn't bother me at all. Not even a little. It doesn't seem like a meaningful betrayal on SY's part, and I'm not "disappointed" by the cognitive dissonance. I love cognitive dissonance and got used to the commodification of my youth ages ago.

So...you're not offended or disappointed in SY, you're just arguing earnestly from the perspective of strawmen hipsters who might be?

I must take the position that coffee is not great, it just keeps me awake.

the thing about starbucks is that people think it poached all these people from cool independent coffee shops with really good coffee, but i think it mostly just got people that used to roll thru the mcdonalds drive thru every AM, like dan (i think said)

I must make the confession that I have gone to Starbucks in the past week, but have not listened to a Sonic Youth album.

In the last week? Or ever haha.

Alex: yeah, but I wouldn't describe my attempts so sneeringly. I live in a world with Starbucks and also with young urban hipster people. Just from talking to folks, talking to friends, reading stuff, watching TV, I get certain impressions about how various groups view things and each other, even themselves. These impressions aren't necessarily gospel truth, but I have a certain amount of (misplaced?) faith in my ability to suss them out. I don't think there's anything wrong with any of this, and a "strawman" is only a logical fallacy when it's being used to support an attack of some sort. Like I said, I wasn't criticizing Starbucks or SY in my initial posts.

If I'm wrong about how hipsters view Starbucks, then set me straight. If I'm not wrong, I don't see what the problems is.

last post re Alex's suggestion that I'm, "arguing earnestly from the perspective of strawmen hipsters who might be."

http://www.nataliedee.com/050404/natural-hipster.jpg

Fair enough, Bob. You just seemed so invested in the statements in your first post (about how Starbucks is "soulless low-com-denom in a middle-aged, middle-class housewife sort of way" and Sonic Youth is a "timeless, all-weather coolness bastion that stands in opposition to zombie cow people who buy the wrong shoes") that I assumed those were your opinions, and not a composite of opinions of people you know or talked to about the subject.

Starbucks does charge a bit more for their coffee than most independent places, although I get riled sometimes when people complain about "FIVE DOLLAR coffees!!!" because they're only $5 if you get, like, a 32 oz. latte with soy milk and chocolate syrup and whipped cream. I haven't been in a Starbucks in a while, but I'd be surprised if a 12 oz. black coffee is over two bucks.

The monster fuck-off regular coffee (20 oz?) costs less than $2 in Boston. You only pay out the ass if you are buying cappucino/mocha/latte derivatives/extrapolations, which, if you are a REAL coffee drinker, you will scoff at or handle as a special treat.

Yeah I go to Starbucks for an occasional "dessert coffee" on weekends. In the morning I get a styrofoam cup of black coffee out of the machine in my office. They're about as similiar as lemonade and 7-Up.

Alex: yeh. I don't personally agree with either of the statements you quoted.

OK, thanks for clarifying.

FWIW, Alex, I think there's something spoiled about a lot of the anti-Starbuck's sentiment I encounter (anti-parental, even misogynist as I suggested in my 1st post). While I don't like the chain, my objections are more in line with what Nabisco described a while back. Starbucks makes me sad. I think it contributes only emptiness to the American landscape. I don't think it's wrong or evil, but something about it makes me feel awful inside. I have the sense that it's a kind of social failure colored up and packaged to resemble success, and that makes it even worse than plain old urban blight. But I'm getting off topic.

What would make Starbuck's a social success?

DOGTITS LATTE

Besides that.

I don't know that I can argue a serious case for that, HD, just given how contentious ILX is. What I'm talking about here is a matter of personal aesthetics that verges over in something vaguely spiritual (i.e., bullshit).

I just think that some spaces are life-defeating. Intrinsically empty. Made not to be experienced or inhabited, but merely constructed to house transactions - financial or otherwise. The perfection of these spaces exists in their invisibility, even their fundamental non-existence. Perfect examples are airport lounge areas, hotel hallways, mall courts. These spaces do not exist. Time spent in them is between time, meaningless.

Problem is that this kind of emptiness is conducive to certain kinds of financial transactions, too. And it's cheap. And it offends no one. So it grows. These spaces and their emptiness grow like cancer, taking the world away one structure at a time. Worse still, we grow accustomed to them, so that after a while we don't feel the chill. Hell, some of us even seem to like it.

There's something about vacant uniformity of manufactured culture/society/architecture/life that terrifies me. And I know that it makes sense. That the future is in high density and cheap mass manufacturing. So maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, getting ready to pine wistfully for "the good old days". I dunno.

Personally, my solution to the social failure I'm talking about is the imperfect work of imperfect human hands. Smallness. Distinctness. You know the drill.

anybody else keep reading the thread title like that bank advertisement where the manager robs all the customers? JAWW ON THE FLOOOOOOORRRRRR!!!!!

JARRRRRRRRRRRVIKKKKKKKK ON THE FLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORRRRRRRRRRRRRRr

estoy lol

LET THE LATTES HIT THE FLOOR, LET THE LATTES HIT THE FLOOR

What I'm talking about here is a matter of personal aesthetics that verges over in something vaguely spiritual (i.e., bullshit).

^^i love this.

but really i think i get what your saying, bob.

Bob, I think you are incredibly self-aware because I am sitting here seething with mock-irritation because you pulled the "bullshit" card on yourself before I could.

This entire passage is completely nonsensical to me: The perfection of these spaces exists in their invisibility, even their fundamental non-existence. Perfect examples are airport lounge areas, hotel hallways, mall courts. These spaces do not exist. Time spent in them is between time, meaningless. This passage is nonsensical because, well, these spaces DO actually exist and they exist for a reason. Airport lounges give people a place to wait for their planes that is more comfortable than standing in line and in close enough proximity to the gate that you don't miss your flight when boarding starts. Mall courts exist so that patrons have a place to rest while they are shopping, increasing the overall comfort of the shopping experience. Hotel hallways exist because a hotel without hallways is either a motel, where every room has a door to the outside, or a really stupidly-designed hotel where you have to walk through other people's rooms to get to your own. You are rejecting things fundamentally aimed at increasing the comfort level of the people utilizing them as being uncomfortable wastes of space and time and offering in their place... what? From what I gather, you want to take these spaces that bring people together and break them up into isolated, segregated units because you feel that seperating people is more socially successful than putting them together. I don't think that makes any sense, so either I'm misconstruing you or the social failure is your reaction to these spaces, not the spaces themselves, which could also be extrapolated to this entire Starbuck's/Sonic Youth debate.

I think his argument hinges on the last sentence you quoted, that said spaces (and starbucks) have all the semiotic value of an ampersand

Guys, Bob already explained that he's merely expressing a bunch of ridiculous opinions that he himself doesn't really believe, I don't know why you're still trying to engage him in any kind of debate. He's having an out-of-argument experience, floating above us all.

Alex, I'm killing time before leaving work.

Tom, that last sentence scans if you buy the sentence before it, which I do not.

social success vs. social failure here I think really boils down to whether you share a particular sort of optimism with regards to other people (that if you get to know them they're all okay, everybody should talk more) or don't (fuck people wtf I want to deal with them for) or alternatively whether you lean more towards walker percy or, like, foucault (which I certainly prefer the former but am generally not that naive when I'm in, for example, a starbucks)

is there anyone here who genuinely believes this is a "sellout" move on SY's part? (besides maybe sara sara sara?)

I have been reading some percy and trow and shit like that can you tell

LET THE LATTES HIT THE FLOOR, LET THE LATTES HIT THE FLOOR

lol

Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Starbucks

What you're talking about, HD, is functionality. I agree the spaces in question (hotel hallways, airport rest areas) are functional, practical, efficient. In that sense, even ideal. But I wasn't complaining about their functionality, or even calling them uncomfortable. I was talking about their vacancy on some level that I don't even have a word for. Spiritual? emotional? yes and no, less and more. Fact is, with regard to these spaces, that kind of vacancy is appropriate, even necessary. We want transitional spaces to be invisible, to simply facilitate the passage of thing one into another.

Problem, as I see it, is that this kind of emptiness is consuming more and more of the built landscape, and in turn, more and more of our lives. It's a kind of surrender. We give up actuality and human presence in the name of practicality, efficiency and comfort. In doing so we create a ghost world that superficially resembles something that people might inhabit, but is inimical to real human life. Best Buy, the Cheesecake Factory, Starbucks, Washington Mutual, The Gap, McDonald's, Ikea, malls, Irish-themed "pubs", most office suites and new-built condos. These places extend the lifeless, anaesthetic emptiness of transitional spaces into the non-transitional, supposedly meaningful parts of our lives. And they pith us, making us ghosts to match the decor.

I don't know what the alternative is. I mean, if you're living in an old-fashioned "failed city", a ton of shitty condos and a Niketown probably seem like a small price to pay for jobs, industry, culture and a reduction in crime. It's hard to argue with success, especially when you imagine that the only alternative is failure. But I don't think we have to look at this in either/or terms. I like to imagine that we can have functioning, healthy cities that don't depend on turning civic culture into a kind of outdoor shopping mall.

Guys, Bob already explained that he's merely expressing a bunch of ridiculous opinions that he himself doesn't really believe

Fuck, Alex, that's just childish. I wasn't doing that in the first place, and I'm certainly not doing it now.